Smith, D. Ray

ORAL HISTORY OF D. RAY SMITH
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 19, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March 19, 2013, and I am at the New Hope Center at Y-12 in the library of the history museum, and I'm talking with David Ray Smith, or D. Ray, as he's known around town. Ray, thanks for taking time to talk with us.
MR. SMITH: You bet, Keith. Glad to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: You're always talking about the history of Oak Ridge and promoting the history of Oak Ridge, and specifically of Y-12. We want to learn a little something about you personally, so let's start off today with why don't you tell me about you, about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
MR. SMITH: I'd be glad to. I was born in Middle Tennessee, a little crossroads community about 50 miles south of Nashville. The name of the little community is Delina, and that's D-E-L-I-N-A. I don't know of another Delina that exists. But the little crossroads community it was named for, a widow that lived there, her name was Delina Marshall, and the saying is that the town was named for her beautiful name and character. So, she was a well-respected lady in the community. Now, there were two Delina's. One was up very near her plantation, and then it was moved when the roads came through. It was moved down to where it is today. It's still there today.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, the community was moved?
MR. SMITH: Yes, the whole community was moved, and it's still there today. There's a little store there called the Crossroads Store. Several years ago, I came across a manuscript that had been written by Haskell Roden about Delina. Now, the whole manuscript didn't have a single complete sentence, it was phrases, and it was all about genealogy of people in Delina. I spent about ten years of my spare time editing that manuscript, and produced a book called “Delina,” and it has been a very popular book in the little community of Delina.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. SMITH: So, I've had a lot of fun with that.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, how many people lived --
MR. SMITH: But let me tell you --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- okay.
MR. SMITH: -- the guy that wrote the book so we get his name on here, Haskell Rodin was his name, and he was really into genealogy. So, I made a story out of all of the book that he did, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, when you were growing up there, how many people lived in Delina?
MR. SMITH: Oh, probably 25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah. The place where I went to school was Petersburg. Petersburg is about, oh, five miles, maybe ten miles from Delina, and it had a large population of 500.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So, that was a big city --
MR. SMITH: A big city, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wasn't it?
MR. SMITH: My high school class had about 26 people in it. Fanny, my wife, was in the class ahead of me, and we knew each other all the way through grade school and high school. She never would have anything to do with me until she was a senior in high school, and her cousin, Emily, talked to me and I talked to her, and I said, "You know, I'd really like to date Fanny." She said, "Well, let me talk to her." So, she did, and she set it up to where Fanny was going to be in the study hall at a given time, and I was supposed to go in and say something to her, ask her for a date. Well, what I did was I really thought I was hot stuff back then, so I strutted, okay?
MR. MCDANIEL: We all did.
MR. SMITH: Oh, we all did. I had a 1950 Ford, dark blue, fender skirts lowered in the back, spinner hubcaps. So, I walked into the study hall and I winked at her. That's been something that she's never let me forget just how big I thought I was. But she agreed to date me, and we've been together ever since. That's pushing 49 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, I have real fond memories of Delina, a little crossroads community, farming community. The first job I ever had was building the road coming through Delina. There was two of us, young boys -- between our sophomore and junior year in high school -- and I got the nickname of Slick, and the other one had another nickname, Shorty, I believe, so they aggravated the two of us. I was on the sand pile, he was on the rock pile along with another person, so they had two people on the rock pile and one on the sand pile. We were so far out in the country, you couldn't get ready-mix concrete out there. We had to mix it on site. So, every time they put two wheelbarrow-full of gravel in, I had to put two of sand. Well, I figured out that the amount of sand I had to weigh and get up there, if I rounded that wheelbarrow over, I could do it in one trip. So, I did that, and I was keeping up with them. I mean, I was just having a ball. I went over the scales, and I had to make a 90-degree turn to get into the hopper, and I come across those scales and made that 90-degree turn, and I lost that wheelbarrow. It rolled over and it just filled my foreman's feet up to his knee. He looked at me and he said, "That's all right, Slick. It don't hurt nothing but your pride. Fill it up and keep going." But that was my first job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how did you end up there in Delina? I mean did your --
MR. SMITH: My parents lived in Haislip Hollow, which is about five miles up from Delina, a little dirt road, and we lived at the headwaters of the Cane Creek, and had a 100-acre farm. It was a hillside farm. My dad and mother moved there when I was two years old. I was born over closer to Petersburg, but he moved in, Dad moved in with my grandmother, my mother's mother. She had a log cabin there, so when he moved in, he doubled the size of the log cabin, so he built a section of a house onto it, and I lived there until I graduated from high school, in Haislip Hollow in a log cabin.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did your grandmother, did she live there along with you?
MR. SMITH: Yes. Yes, she did. She was there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so it was all part of the same family unit.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, moved in with her, and she lived there until she died, and then my parents lived there until my dad died, and then Mother had to go into a nursing home. She had Parkinson's disease, and so we had to move her up to Nashville to be closer to my sister. But my dad lived there. He died with cancer in his 60's, but he was a farmer. He worked all his life as a farmer, and he wore a work shirt, he buttoned his collar at the top, and he wore a straw hat. He had 60 skin cancers burned off his face --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- all of them between his collar and the shadow of his hat, so the sun was what was doing it to him, and then one come up that didn't heal and he died. I was the youngest one of the family. I've got two brothers older than me, and a sister, and the nearest brother to me is 15 years older than I am.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: So, when you stop and think about this, I'm one of those change-of-life babies. I'm not supposed to be here. My parents had raised two boys and a girl, and then 15 years later, I came along. My dad was 49, my mother was 40, so I lost both of them when I was a teenager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I understand.
MR. SMITH: A story that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Your brothers and sister are significantly older than you now.
MR. SMITH: -- yeah, that's right. They're in their 80's. A story that sticks with me like glue when my daddy -- I loved my daddy. I look a lot like him, and there's a good story there we'll get to in a minute. But when he was so sick with cancer, I drove him to Nashville to the hospital, and we'd go up on about a weekly basis. Now, I've got two older brothers and a sister, but they're not doing anything with this situation; his 16-, 17-year-old boy is dealing with it. So, when he went into the hospital for his last surgery, he called me into his room, and I went in, and he said, "Son, when they do this surgery on me, you tell that doctor that you want my hair." They were going to do a surgery up here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. SMITH: I said, "Dad, what do I need with your hair?" He said, "Son, the undertaker will want it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, here I am, a 17-year-old boy, dealing with those kinds of issues.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my goodness, my goodness.
MR. SMITH: He knew he wasn't coming back, it was the end of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: He knew that was the end.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, that was it.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness. So, let's move on to when you graduated high school. Tell me what did you do?
MR. SMITH: I got married.
MR. MCDANIEL: You got married? Okay.
MR. SMITH: Right after I graduated, that was the next thing we did. We graduated in May and got married in June, and the coach at the high school told my wife, Fanny -- Fanny's mother died when she was 12 years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, and her dad was sick all of his life that she knew him just about. She also was the product of an elderly -- her mother was 39, I think, and her dad somewhere in his 40's, and he died early, so she had to deal with that. When we were high school sweethearts, Fanny was a really good basketball player. She's left-handed, she had a left-handed hook shot that she could hit just at will.
MR. MCDANIEL: And she's short.
MR. SMITH: She's short --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, for a --
MR. SMITH: -- but she was good --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- ballplayer, anyway.
MR. SMITH: -- for a ballplayer. She played guard, and she was all-tournament and all-state. I mean, her coach was just really proud of her, and she's hanging with this hoodlum. So, he told her, he said, "If your mother was alive, she wouldn't let you date him."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Was that the wrong thing to tell her?
MR. SMITH: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: It didn't do any good.
MR. SMITH: Fanny would make up her own mind. You know how she checked me out? She went to her grandmother and asked her grandmother what she thought of me --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and her grandmother said, "Oh, I know his family. He's pretty good. He'll be all right." But anyway, we got married June 27 in 1964, right out of high school, and we immediately started taking care of parents, and her aunt. We lived with her aunt for a while. During this time now, middle '60s, late in the '60s, I'd had another job after that job building those bridges. This job was driving a truck for the Sun Drop, which is like a Mountain Dew. Sun Drop down in Middle Tennessee, it outsells Mountain Dew.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure.
MR. SMITH: But I had a job driving that Coke truck, or that drink truck, and I had two wrecks. One, I met a car on a narrow road and slipped off the shoulder, and the truck slid down in the ditch. I broke 250 cases of drinks out in this field. I had to go back the next day and pick up all that glass because the man's cows, he couldn't let them get to that glass. Then, I had another one in the middle of a little town called Belfast, and the insurance wouldn't let me drive anymore for this old boy. He said, "You've got to fire that guy." So, anyway, I left that job and went to another job in a little machine shop there, and Fanny was working there, too, and then we got this notice that I was going to be drafted into the Army. Well, we had parents to take care of. We had all kinds of things. We just couldn't deal with this Army.
MR. MCDANIEL: You just couldn't do that, right.
MR. SMITH: So, I went to the Air Force, and I told them, I said, "I would like to join the Air Force, but I need six months to get my things in order," and they agreed to that and gave me six months, so I avoided the draft and went in the Air Force. I went in in 1966, stayed until 1970. We first went to Texas, to Lackland Air Force Base, and I did basic training there. Then, we went to Biloxi, Mississippi, and, out of there, I went to Warner Robins, Georgia. Good peaches down there, but it's hot.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's hot. I was about to say, you chose the hot places, didn't you?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, it was. Fanny was pregnant with Mike at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MR. SMITH: We moved from Biloxi, Mississippi to Warner Robins, Georgia, and me stopping at every service station on the road so she could go to the bathroom, eight months pregnant.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah.
MR. SMITH: But Mike always tells us that he was a Georgia cracker because he was born in Georgia. But anyway, I left there and went to Vietnam, spent a year in Vietnam at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base as a radio relay technician working on air-to-ground radio and station-to-station radio, and they needed a warning system for the base. So, the base commander wanted something that he could get on and speak to everyone on the base.
MR. MCDANIEL: All at once.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, all at once, so what I set him up with, I took some of our radio equipment and created a radio station. I got some music on tape and played music 24 hours a day, except if he wanted to override it, he could just come right in on there and it would go out to the base to everybody that had radios, and everybody had a radio. They were listening to that music. They liked that music. So, we called it Giant Voice, and it was the warning system for the base. I was there right after the Tet Offensive, and that's why they wanted that warning system, because rockets were coming into the base pretty regularly. But anyway, I spent a year in Vietnam, and then came back and went to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, Midwest City, Oklahoma, and we stayed there up until September of 1970.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. SMITH: September 14, 1970, I came to work at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you stayed in the service for four years.
MR. SMITH: Four years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that what you had to do to --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, a four-year enlistment. If I had gone into the Army, it would have just been two years, but, by enlisting in the Air Force, it was four years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: But that's where I got my education as an electronic technician. I graduated first in my class for the electronic technician, and that's what got me the job here. When I came and interviewed at Y-12, two people interviewed me. One was A.K. Johnson, and when he found out that I was in the Air Force, he said, "I've got a man that needs to talk to you," and I said, "Okay." I didn't know who I was talking to. But what he did is he brought an Air Force Colonel in to interview me, and the Air Force Colonel, his name was Emerson, Colonel Emerson, but I found this out later, he was called Colonel Klink.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. SMITH: He was a strange fellow.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was he at Y-12?
MR. SMITH: He was Y-12, and he retired out of the Air Force, so he's the one that said, "That boy's got a good background. You ought to hire him, A.K." So, A.K. hired me, and I worked for A.K. for many years in maintenance. Jump ahead; just to tell you an A.K. story while we're here, he worked for Dave Jennings. Dave Jennings was known as a tough old dude, but he was soft underneath when you got to know him, but he had a very rough exterior. When I was being interviewed, A.K. interviewed me for hiring me, and then he interviewed me to promote me from hourly to salary, and Dave Jennings was interviewing me at the same time. So, one of Dave's questions to me is, "If you had unlimited funds and you could do anything you wanted to, to improve Y-12, what would it be?" and I said, "I would provide training for these supervisors you've got out here that don't know how to supervise people." Jennings reared back and hit the desk with his hands, pointed to A.K. and said, "I told you we needed some supervisory training!"
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, about two years later, I got the opportunity to recommend to the plant some supervisory training. Jennings backed me in it, and you know, when I went to him and told him what I wanted to do -- the name of the training is Interaction Management. It's based on three key principles: listen and respond with empathy, ask for help in solving the problem, and enhance a person's self-esteem, those three key principles. I went and told Dave Jennings that that's what I wanted to bring into the plant. He said, "That's tough," because he said, "You want the managers to train the supervisors." I said, "Yeah, that's the key to it. You've got to train these middle managers, because if you don't get them doing what they say they want the supervisor to do, and actually doing it, not just talking it, you'll never get the supervisors to do it." He said, "All right, we'll do it on one condition." I said, "What's that?" He said, "You train A.K. Johnson to teach it." So, I said, "Okay, you've got a deal." I took A.K. to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and spent a week with him, and I had the other people up there, too, but I concentrated on him because we had to prove that we could teach this stuff, and they measured us on competencies. So, I'd get him at night and coach him on what to do the next day; worked my tail off while I was up there. But he passed that course and, when I come back, Jennings laughed, and he said, "I never thought you could do it." But I bet I trained 150 managers to teach that course, and it stayed on out here for years, and it's still a part of the training that we produce today, still based on those key principles. Something I was proud of --
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet, I bet. Well, my goodness. So, you started doing that, started training, and you trained people here at Y-12 for a long time.
MR. SMITH: Actually, I went from electronic technician to a planner estimator, to a supervisor. At the time I was just starting in supervision, I got pulled out to go into Human Resources, and that's when we started the pride circles. Japanese quality circles were all the rage, and so we started our own version of it here, and I had that responsibility at the plant level, and then we created the foundation of Y-12 supervision, which was that program that had interaction management in it, and I had that for a number of years. Then, in about '85, I went back to maintenance out of that Human Resources training group, and spent the next 16 years in various levels of management, in maintenance for the most part, up until I became the Associate Director of the Facilities Management Organization and had the day-to-day responsibility for about 1,000 people doing the maintenance for the plant. That's where I was when we had this most interesting contract change, and that's where B&W Y-12 came in, but they were BWXT Y-12 at the time. This was in November of 2000.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: They did something no other contractor had ever done. Normally, when we'd have a contract change, they'd just bring in the president and a lawyer, and the rest of us would just keep on doing our job. We'd call ourselves We-Be's, "We'd be here before you came, we'll be here when you're gone." But now this one did something different, they brought in 100 people, and they replaced the entire top of the organization, so I lost my position.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: Now, the first thing they had to do was to do something called a Due Diligence study, and that is find all the buildings that they've just now become responsible for and write down on a sheet of paper, or in a database what the physical condition are of all of those buildings. There are 800 buildings on this site. Now, they made everybody mad at them when they fired these people, so there wasn't anybody helping them. They called a meeting together to figure out what to do to get this due diligence going. I went into the meeting and I held up my hand. I said, "I know where all 800 of them are. I'll find them for you," so they said, "Okay, you can help." I went home that night, learned Microsoft Access, come back the next day and created a database. So, we did that, we went and found all 800 buildings, wrote down the condition of them. In a few months, they got some money from Congress that was earmarked to tear down Manhattan Project structures that didn't have any mission need, nor would be needed in future missions. So, bless their heart, they didn't have a clue which buildings they could tear down and which ones they needed to keep, so they called another meeting. I went into that meeting and I held up my hand. I said, "I know. I'll make you a list," so I did, I made a list of the buildings that could be torn down. Over the last ten years, we've torn down over 300 buildings.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, that's just at Y-12.
MR. SMITH: At Y-12 only --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, at Y-12 only.
MR. SMITH: -- and they're still following my list.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, I let that go for a couple of years. I was working in infrastructure reduction, tearing those buildings down, and I went to them after a couple of years and I said, "You know, when you tear those buildings down, you're losing a lot of history." Well, by then, they had figured me out, so they said, "Okay, Ray. What is it you want to do about that?" I said, "I'll be your historian until I retire." They agreed to it. The federal people here at the site, Bill Brumley, agreed to it and supported me. They included this history center in the design for the New Hope Center. We've created documentary films, we provided this history center, we provide tours; we have made a major transition from the time when Y-12 existed, during the Cold War especially, existed by saying, "Just bring us money. Dump it out here. We'll give you as many nuclear weapons as you need. Just don't ask us about what we're doing. We'll do it for you."
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: Well, after the Cold War ended, the need for understanding by the community was substantially different. We had a lot of people that we were losing their technical expertise. They were retiring. We were trying to hire people right out of college, and they didn't understand or know what Y-12 was all about. So, this history, this Y-12 history has taken on a significant role here at Y-12. I've got other people that I call on to do these tours now. I started doing them myself, but they got to be so many there is no way I can keep up. I've got others that are capable of doing the history tours, and we're now on tour routes. We have 65-passenger buses stop here routinely and go through the history center. So, it's been a significant change that's allowed us to communicate our heritage to the employees, especially new employees, and also to the community in a way that Y-12 has never been able to do before, so it's something I'm really proud of.
MR. MCDANIEL: They couldn't really before, I mean --
MR. SMITH: No, no, they couldn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- during the Cold War, you couldn't tell what you were doing.
MR. SMITH: No. In fact, there was good reason not to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure, absolutely.
MR. SMITH: But now, there's a significant amount of what we do here that's not classified that can be talked about. There's still work that's not discussed, and that's not a part of what I deal in because I know that those things need to be kept, but there's a tremendous amount of things that we've done over the years, the Moon Box --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly.
MR. SMITH: -- things like that, that now can be talked about extensively.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure. So, you're the official historian, Y-12 historian, and you kind of got that agreement until it was time for you to retire.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, the problem they have now, of course, is I don't want to retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, of course not --
MR. SMITH: But I will.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but you could, couldn't you?
MR. SMITH: I could, yes, and I'm getting closer to the time when it's going be time to retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you've got other things to do, too.
MR. SMITH: Well, I do. I've got several other things going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about your involvement outside of Y-12. Of course, it kind of all blends together --
MR. SMITH: Well, it does.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but you've done a lot in the community of Oak Ridge. Talk about that a little bit.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, I'll be glad to. We, as I say, moved here in 1970, started living on Louisiana Avenue. We lived at 198 Louisiana, had two boys. Mike was born in Georgia, as I mentioned, he's a Georgia cracker, but Zane -- he's five years younger -- was born here in Oak Ridge, or born in Knoxville, but both of them grew up here in Oak Ridge; had a really good experience in Oak Ridge school system. Went to Willow Brook, went to Robertsville, and to Oak Ridge High School. Mike was an artist, he is an artist, still is, but even during school he got to do a lot of artwork. He drew a Superman for a backdrop for one of their plays at Robertsville, and that sort of thing. I've got four grandsons and one granddaughter, and the oldest grandson is Jake, and he's just finishing high school this year, and he's already been accepted at the Savannah School of Art and Design.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good.
MR. SMITH: -- very proud of him. He's an excellent artist, so good for that. So, Fanny and I are here and we're raising these two young boys. We are very active in our church, Highland View Church of Christ. We've been there for the 42 years that we've been here. I'm an elder there now. Back, oh, in the middle '70s, we started working with the youth program. We didn't have a hired youth director at the time, or youth minister, so we were it. We took kids all over this country, we'd take them on retreats, and also in the middle '70s, Mike was old enough to become a Cub Scout. We'd had him in Indian --
MR. MCDANIEL: Indian Guides.
MR. SMITH: -- Guides, that's it, and then, when I looked around at what opportunities were available for Cub Scouts, I didn't like any of them. They were all den mothers, and they were all working crafts, something like that, and they didn't do any outdoor activities. They only met during the school year. So, I talked to Tom Goodpasture, who was the scoutmaster for Troop 220, sponsored by our church, and he and I talked about the fact that there just wasn't good opportunities for young boys in Cub Scouts. So, we decided that the only way to get that would be to do it ourselves, so I became the Cub Master.
MR. MCDANIEL: In true Oak Ridge tradition.
MR. SMITH: True Oak Ridge tradition. I became the Cub Master and did that for 16 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, we met every Monday night year round. We met at the Children's Museum. Selma Shapiro gave me a room and let me use the gym once a month for our den meetings. At one time, we had 80 boys.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: Now, you can't do this now, insurance situations have changed, but back then, in the '80s, we could do this. We would go repelling, we would go spelunking, go in caves --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and we would take overnight hikes with these kids. We'd take the parents that would go with them. I had many children, many of the boys were in single-parent families, and all of my den leaders were men, and all of these women that were single mothers, they would gravitate to that pack because of that male influence, a good, strong male influence.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. SMITH: I had a rule that we called Kiss and Make Up; any boy that got in a fight with another boy had to kiss that boy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: We didn't have any fights.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet you didn't have any fights. How funny.
MR. SMITH: When we would get ready to go on an outing or something that I needed their attention, I'd line them up, have them all gather around me, and I'd get down on my knees to where my eyes was on the same level as them boys, and you'd be amazed how attentive they would be to what I was telling them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: I took them up on bluffs, I took them on places where it was really dangerous, and they would pay attention to me, they knew my voice, they listened and did what I said, and I can't tell you the number of times that we've had compliments from parents, and from other groups that we were participating in, on how well-disciplined our boys are. Normally, when you have a group of Cub Scouts, you've got a bunch of, well, this is what I'd call a bunch of wild Indians, and the way I talked to them is, "We will not act like a bunch of wild Indians, so if you hear me say, 'You're acting like a bunch of wild Indians,' it's time for you to change your behavior," and they would do that. I'd just have to use that word, and it would calm down whatever was going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: What an impact over 16 years --
MR. SMITH: We did, over 16 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that you had on those boys.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, I have numerous who come to me routinely and regularly and remind me of how much they enjoyed that Cub Scout Pack 220 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: -- so it's a tremendous experience.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, just think, I mean over 16 years, the number of --
MR. SMITH: The number of them, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- number of them
MR. SMITH: Well, it wasn't 80 all the time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, but still.
MR. SMITH: -- but there was 50, 60, you know --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah --
MR. SMITH: -- there was still a large number.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- a large number.
MR. SMITH: A large number.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, and it was a lot of fun, a lot of years spent there. Of course, my boys went through it and then moved on to scouting, and I was an assistant scoutmaster, as well as the cub master, because I wanted to be involved with whatever my boys were doing. They both turned out and made Eagle Scouts, and Zane, when he was being interviewed for one of his jobs, he was competing with another person, and it came down to the fact that he had an Eagle Scout --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and that got him the job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that makes a big difference.
MR. SMITH: Well, it tells --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I mean it tells --
MR. SMITH: -- it tells you that a person has the ability to stick to a project and to see it to a positive completion.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, scouting was really good. We had any of a number of adventures I could talk about. One I'll use is we went to the coal mines out here behind Oliver Springs, over toward Frozen Head. Now, we had gone to Knoxville and had permission to hike up from those coal mines. We were going to follow the coal mines and come back to Oak Ridge at Oliver Springs. So, we went up toward Frozen Head there on Highway 116. We always went in late on Friday night. We'd leave work and everybody would get together, and it would be dark before we got to where we were going to camp. Well, it was dark when we were going up that mountain, and we got up the border of the coal mining area, and this guy hollered at us and said, "What are you doing up here? You can't come on this property," and we said, "Well, we've got permission. We're Scout Troop 220, and we've got permission to hike up here." "I don't care what you've got. You're not coming on this property." Now, we didn't think about this at the time, but it was during a coalminers strike --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and he was hollering at us, and he had a dog with him, so he tried to sic that dog on us. When that dog come down the hill, the boys just started petting him. Made the old man so mad because his dog wouldn't do what he told him to. We finally figured out that he was just a little bit inebriated, he was just about drunk up there, and I'm not sure he could have read that letter if we had got him to look at it. But he told us if we didn't get down off that hill he was going to shoot us, so we decided we didn't want any of these boys shot, so we said, "Boys, you all just turn around, and let's just go on off the hill." Well, the minute we turned, he started shooting at us, and he was shooting birdshot in a .22, birdshot --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and their little pellets were hitting on the back of them packs of the boys as we were going down the hill.
MR. MCDANIEL: No! Really?
MR. SMITH: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet it scared them to death.
MR. SMITH: It did. We had a preacher with us. I never will forget what he said when he was telling those stories about getting shot on the coal mine. But one boy got a pellet in his neck that kind of burned him, but it didn't hurt. But, boy, they were just peppered.
MR. MCDANIEL: What an adventure! Talk about an adventure.
MR. SMITH: They remember that.
MR. MCDANIEL: They remember that.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, they do.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure they did.
MR. SMITH: But scouting was a big part of our time here, scouting and church, activities with young people. Fanny and I have always been engaged with young people in one way or the other, and then when I went into the eldership at the church is when I decided there isn’t nobody going to devote the kind of energy that I've been devoting to them if we don't hire somebody and pay them to do it, so I did. We convinced the church that we needed a youth minister, and we've had one ever since. We've got a good one now. But I thoroughly enjoyed what I did with the youth, Fanny and I did together, but I seriously wouldn't expect anybody else to do that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: -- but it was tremendous. We went down to a park between here and Chattanooga, and now, I'm trying to think of the name of it. I can't. But we would put the girls in one cabin and the boys in another, and then we'd tell them, "Okay, lights out, time to go to bed," and I heard this chatter from the girls. I heard them talking. So, I got up and I went out the door to go quiet them down, and I kept listening trying to figure out which cabin they were, where is it coming from, and it was coming from up high. I kept looking around and trying to find out where is this noise coming from. They're laughing, they're talking, they're having a good time, but where are they? Now, it's pitch dark. I finally saw the water tank. They had climbed up on top of that water tank.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just the girls, or were there boys with them?
MR. SMITH: There wasn't any boys, it was just these girls. So, I climbed up on that water tank real quiet, got up to the top, and they were sitting up there just having a really good time. You talk about some scared girls, I thought they were going to jump off that water tank when I let them know I was up there. But it wasn't unusual to have good times with young kids, and the thing that I remember most, and we did this with the church group, as well as the Cub Scouts, as well as the Boy Scouts, the thing that you can do with a young person that will most quickly build their self-confidence is repelling, and sometimes it's really difficult for them to do. They've got to hold on to this rope and back off of this cliff to where there's nothing but that rope is holding them. Now, there's somebody down at the bottom that's got it that can stop them, but they don't know that.
MR. MCDANIEL: That will cushion their fall at least.
MR. SMITH: Oh yeah, but they don't know that. I mean I've seen them quiver, shake, just scared to death, but when their feet hit the bottom, they have grown a mile in their self-confidence.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: It really is the number one thing that helps a kid that's having a little bit of trouble about feeling they can do things, boy, when they repel, it builds their self-confidence, and we would do that. We would look for things that would enhance that experience for those kids, and then by doing it with the Boy Scouts and with the Cub Scouts, we were real experienced at it, so we'd take these kids from church -- young girls, young boys -- and let them repel, too, and they just loved it. One of the places we used a lot is this cave that's right out here near Bull Run. I think it’s called Spring -- I forget the name of it -- Spring Hill Cave, or something. Anyway, it's got a big opening, and what you do is go up to the top and tie to a tree and repel down into the cave, so it's a free-fall. It's a long drop, so it's a good place to repel. But we had a really good time with young people for a long number of years. Can't keep up with them anymore, but I make sure that the youth minister does and I still support scouting big time, and I'm proud to see young people getting help.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what are some of the other things that you were involved in in the community? I know you've been involved in lots of things.
MR. SMITH: Well, I've been on the United Way board for two terms. I'm on my second six-year term. I'm on the ADFAC board, second term, for the Aid for Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties. I'm on the Habitat for Humanity of Anderson County board, and I'm on the board for the East Tennessee Historical Society.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and you've done a lot of community work in the preservation of --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, historic preservation.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- historic preservation.
MR. SMITH: I'm on the board for Oak Ridge Heritage Preservation Association.
MR. MCDANIEL: But not just in Oak Ridge, but really kind of around in the East Tennessee area, haven't you?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, we have. We've had the opportunity to work with the -- I'm on the board of the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance, and we cover about 16 counties there, and I'm also on the Tennessee Children's Home board, which is the whole state of Tennessee, and that's another experience there. We get to deal with kids that are just one step out of jail.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, it's a very tough, tough environment, tough situation. But we have three major locations across the state where we have those children, and we've just built two children's homes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, spent a lot of my time and energy helping young people, and I feel really good about that. But these other things that I've been involved in, these boards that I'm on, I was the chairman for the Anderson County United Way two years, and I've worked in the campaigns at Y-12 for most of the time I've been here, and I'm glad to say that over the last few years, we've been focusing on major donors, getting people to give at the $10,000.00 level and $5,000.00 level, and we've been successful at getting some people who understand the need to contribute, and who have the means to do that. So, that's a good thing that I've thoroughly enjoyed. One thing that I'm working on now that's really going to be a good thing for our area, we're going to have the 2014 Medal of Honor Convention in Knoxville and Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: Yeah. We've already won it. We put together a video and competed with Omaha, Nebraska. When they saw our video, they backed out --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- so we got it.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what is that convention? What is that?
MR. SMITH: Well, it's where the Medal of Honor recipients, there's about 80 of them, and they get together once a year. This last year, it was in Hawaii. Each year, they have a convention and they'll spend a week together --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and we'll have them here in Knoxville for that week. We're also creating a documentary film about the Medal of Honor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. SMITH: There have been films made about the people, but there's never been one made about --
MR. MCDANIEL: Just --
MR. SMITH: -- just that medal --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that medal.
MR. SMITH: -- and how it's made and what's the history of that medal. So, a few weeks ago, I had Bruce Crandall. You know the movie, We Were Soldiers?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. SMITH: Bruce, he's the helicopter pilot --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: -- that went in and kept going in and out. They brought him into town. There's a program going into the schools now that you're going to hear a lot about called Character Counts, and that's the Medal of Honor group. They have chosen that as their way to help young kids prepare to be better adults, and Tennessee is going to have it -- by the time we have that convention, we hope to have it in all 95 counties.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: We started it in Knoxville. Bruce came here and presented the first school with their certificate for being a Character Counts school, and they wanted to give him some downtime, so they asked me to give him a tour of Y-12 with no press, no publicity, so I did that. I brought him over here. He brought a little white dog with him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he?
MR. SMITH: The little dog was in a carrying case, you know?
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, goodness.
MR. SMITH: I forget the little dog's name. He sat the carrying case down, and he told me, he said, "The dog decides which carrying case he's going in each day," and he used that dog to interact with kids.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, that dog just loves kids. Well, it was amazing. We were standing back there in the middle of the history center, and all of a sudden that little old dog peed on my history center floor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Are you serious?
MR. SMITH: He did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, goodness.
MR. SMITH: Oh, Bruce just reached in his pocket and pulled out his toilet paper he had with him, and went over and wiped it up. I took his toilet paper away and I said, "You want some more?" and brought him back another handful to put in his pocket. But anyway, there was also an opportunity to have a lunch, just a quiet lunch, and I invited a few key people to come and have lunch with Bruce Crandall. One of the people I invited was Jim Rackstraw with Wackenhut, and the reason I did is Jim was the last person that Bruce Crandall brought out --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- in Vietnam in that helicopter. So, I had him to come over, and he came and, when he did, he brought a poster of the “We Were Soldiers,” for Bruce to sign for his son, and, when they saw one another, they just hugged, and they knew, I mean he told him, he said, "I remember you," and they had that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: That was delightful. Now, that's the kind of thing that you don't get to experience often, and, when you do, when you get to be around these people that have earned the Medal of Honor, that have been the recipient, they are tremendous people. We're going to have 80 of them here in September of 2014.
MR. MCDANIEL: That is just representative of the types of things and people that Oak Ridge attracts, isn't it? I know you've been kind of in the forefront of that kind of work.
MR. SMITH: I've been blessed to be able to get involved in many of those kinds of things that I think have been very good. One of the other things that we're working on now that I think is going to be tremendous for the city of Oak Ridge, and for the nation, is the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. We're about to get the bill passed through Congress, and, when we do, we will eventually -- now, it's years away, but we'll eventually have three locations here in Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, New Mexico and Hanford, Washington. Here in Oak Ridge, just had a conversation today with some people who are planning for and looking at how the American Museum of Science and Energy can be prepared for when this national park comes in here, to be a part of that. We got $500,000.00 from the Department of Energy to stabilize the Alexander Inn, and we've got a developer that's coming in. We got to him through the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance. So, I'm just so blessed to be able to be in a position to help influence these really good things that are happening. It sometimes means that you've got to put a lot of energy into it in order to be there when those kind of things happen. You've got to have enough involvement and integrity that people understand that when you speak about something, that's the real truth, that's really what's happening, and they can trust you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: One of the things that's helped build that in this community for me is, Historically Speaking, the newspaper column. I've been writing that on a weekly basis since 2006, that's seven years. That's a long time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, that's a long time.
MR. SMITH: -- of weekly deadlines. But I've been able to write about anything that I want to, so I can bring attention to things that need to be brought out that have historical significance.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. SMITH: So, we've been able to make the community aware of things from our history that otherwise would have slipped through the crack. Now, I intentionally look for oddities, for unusual things, things that will bring attention to our history, but you've got to think about this. I mean we're not, what, 75 miles from the Smokies. The Smokies are the two largest most visited national parks. I mean, it's just one, of course, but Cades Cove is visited more than any other national park.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, you've got the Smokies at 9 million, and then you've got Cades Cove at greater than any other national park. I don't remember the number for Cades Cove.
MR. MCDANIEL: I didn't know Cades Cove was a separate national park.
MR. SMITH: Well, it's not. That's what I'm saying.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: It's the same park, but just the visitors to Cades Cove alone are more visitors than any other national park, except the Smokies.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: So, I think that's interesting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow, that's crazy.
MR. SMITH: I've been very fortunate to get to know Dale Ditmanson, the superintendent of the Smokies. The way that I got to know him was through another thing that I'm very proud to have been involved in over the years, and that's Leadership Oak Ridge. I was chairman of the board for Leadership Oak Ridge for, I don't know, nine or ten years, I don't know how long --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and also got involved with the East Tennessee Regional Leadership Association, and was on their board and chaired it for three years. But through that association of 16 counties of leadership, I've gotten to know a large number of people across the region, and been able to interact with them and network with them, and one of those connections was Bob Miller, who was the public relations person for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and, through him, I was introduced to Dale Ditmanson. Now, Leadership Knoxville, actually its Introduction Knoxville, they run two programs a year. When they come into Oak Ridge for one of their programs, I meet them over on Pellissippi Parkway and get on the bus with them, and tell them my John Hendricks stories and the other stories that I tell, until we get to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then I stay with them for that night. We have dinner together and we have somebody from Y-12 talk to them, somebody from ORNL talk to them, and then we bring somebody in from, or they bring somebody in from TVA to talk to them, and somebody in from the Great Smoky Mountains, and sometimes it's Dale Ditmanson.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right, the superintendent?
MR. SMITH: So, I had dinner with him and told him about this Manhattan Project National Park, got him interested in Oak Ridge, had him come over to the East Tennessee Economic Council meeting on Friday morning. So, we've got a good relationship with him that will be very beneficial to us when the Manhattan Project National Park comes into play.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. SMITH: It was interesting. When we were working the bill last year, I was exchanging e-mail with him quite frequently, just keeping up with what's going on. So, it's those kinds of connections. East Tennessee Historical Society, we'd never had very much of a presence from Oak Ridge on that historical society. Susan Williams, who is owner of the SRW public relations firm, she decided that Oak Ridge needed to have more of a presence over there, so she picked me and asked me if I would come and serve on the board.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: I said I would. So, I went over there, got on the board, and, at that time, they were working on the Voices of the Land exhibit that's a really well done exhibit, and they needed something from Oak Ridge. So, I provided them an artifact, one of the calutron stools, some of the insulators, and then Y-12 gave them $10,000.00 to develop the video that they have there in that Oak Ridge piece. So, we were a significant contributor to that display, and I've had so many people talk about how well that display is done, and they have done a good job on it. That whole Voices of the Land is a really good exhibit. The other thing that I've been really proud to be able to do, and there are two individuals that I'm proud to be able to work with, Bill Wilcox, of course. That plaque up on the wall up there has an interesting story from Bill, our City Historian. He started out working at Y-12 as a chemist, and he got a pass when he came in here that told him he could go see XAX in Building 9731 between this day and this day, and it was a Friday and a Saturday, and he didn't go. He was too busy. You know Bill, he didn't go. So, he never got to see the calutrons. If he had gone, he would have been able to see what he was working on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: He was preparing the material to go into them, but he didn't know what he was preparing the material to go into because he didn't use his pass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Didn't use his pass.
MR. SMITH: So, a few years ago, he framed that, or gave me the pass and letter, and I framed it and put it up there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: But anyway, Bill Wilcox is a tremendous friend. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with him, and he has more knowledge about the history of Y-12, K-25, Oak Ridge than anybody else you'll know, but the other person I want to talk about is Ed Westcott. Ed is a very dear friend, and I am convinced that he should be, and is deserving of much more recognition than we've ever been able to obtain for him. I'm proud of the exhibit that's in AMSE. I'm proud of being able to hold or emcee his 90th birthday celebration, and oh, by the way, we've talked Bill into letting us do his now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's good.
MR. SMITH: We're gonna do it in April, so we'll get to do his and I'm looking forward to that. But I took Ed's pictures. When we built this New Hope Center and Jack Case Center in 2007, we needed to create a documentary film, just a short film, to use during the ribbon cutting, so we used a lot of his photographs, and I kept telling people, "You know, we've got a lot of his photographs. Let's just decorate these two buildings with nothing but his photographs, framed, in black and white," like we've got in here. So, we've got them all in the Jack Case Center and all down here, and then there's a huge 20x50 mural of the ladies leaving, the shift change photo, and when we had the ribbon cutting, I put out that picture in the newspaper -- I write a weekly column about Y-12 in the newspaper, too. That's two columns a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, yeah.
MR. SMITH: But anyway, I put that picture out there and I said, "If anybody knows anyone who's still alive in these pictures, we need to know them and we need to bring them to this ribbon cutting." So, we did. We got five people that were still alive and brought them in. Dorothy Kocher. I can't remember all five of the names right now, but one of them was Miss Atomic Bomb in 1945.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: She's the one that's the coat hanging over her arm. But we brought them out here and had them sign the picture, and brought Ed out, and we've also designated that atrium area -- there's a lot of glass on the side, and it's a real wide hallway that goes to the cafeteria.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: I put some stick-on, I don't know what you call them. What do you call when you stick something on, it's a label or a --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: -- whatever. Anyway, it's Ed's picture that's up there, and we've called it the Ed Westcott Gallery. So, I also took 48 of his black and white images, framed them, made two sets of them; one set is over in the University of Tennessee building in Oak Ridge, where ETEC, East Tennessee Economic Council, where they meet, and the other set is coming back now from the Atlanta archives, the National Archives in Atlanta. We sent them down there last summer when we had a symposium down there where we were working with Joel Walker. We had a symposium about Oak Ridge history, and invited all of the area universities to come and see the records that are down there on the Manhattan Project, and I let him have this traveling exhibit, and he's run it for, well, about nine months now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: So, when it comes back, it's headed over to the East Tennessee History Center to go there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. SMITH: Another thing that came out of that picture being run in the newspaper,r is that Denise Kiernan saw that photograph of those women and she said, "That's a good idea for a book."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: That is exactly right, and what she did is she filed that away and then, later on, she pulled it out and she contacted me and said, "Ray, if I come over to Oak Ridge, will you introduce me to some of those women?" and I did, and that book has turned out to be “The Girls of Atomic City” that's going to be introduced tonight.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, she's in town tonight.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, absolutely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
MR. SMITH: She'll be here tonight at the American Museum of Science and Energy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: But that sprang from that picture, and she's done a wonderful job with that book. Also, she's got connections with publishers and folks in New York City. I mean she was the – I forget what part she played in it, that program on television, to be a millionaire, something about millionaires.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: I don't know what it is. But anyway, she knows her way around New York City, and she fell in love with Ed Westcott's work --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. SMITH: -- and I've taken her up to his house a number of times, and he just loves her because she just makes over him like crazy. But anyway, she wants to take his photographs and do an art exhibit in New York City, and I've told her, "I'll send them. You tell me where to send them. I've got them boxed up, and we can do it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, ready to go.
MR. SMITH: So, my goal is to get an art exhibit in New York City for Ed Westcott --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: -- before he dies. I want him to be able to see it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. SMITH: So, I'm just excited about those kinds of opportunities. Because I put energy into this history issue over the years, I've come in contact with a number of really key people, and not only that, I have now just come back two weeks ago from Los Alamos, where I was invited out there to speak about Oak Ridge. I have contacts in Hanford, Washington, contacts in Washington, D.C., contacts in Pantex, all because of this historical part and this history that we have, and I also go to a number of schools every year and just talk. You remember the school. You went over to the same school in Farragut.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: When I went over there, I took my little multimedia presentation in, and I talked to them for -- my starting time was 10:00, so by the time I'd talked an hour, it was 11:00 and the bell rang for them to go to lunch. One of the young ladies in the class, young girls, held her hand up and she said, "Mr. Smith, if we go get our lunch and bring it back in here, will you keep talking?" I said, "Well, that's up to your teacher," and their teacher said, "Well, sure. We can do that." So, they went and got their lunch, brought it back in there, and I talked for another 45 minutes. So, I've got fourth and fifth graders listening to me talk for two hours.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: Now, that's astounding when you stop and think about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: It is.
MR. SMITH: It's the story.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's the story.
MR. SMITH: It's telling these stories and getting them engaged, getting them to ask you questions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure.
MR. SMITH: I had a meeting yesterday with a professor from UT. He's a professor of rhetoric, and he wants to know how I have accomplished creating this history center and creating the stories about Y-12, and creating so much interest in our history, so I'm delighted, obviously. I'm delighted to tell him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely, absolutely.
MR. SMITH: So, I'm having too much fun to retire, Keith.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I understand, and you're also still real involved in the community because, like I said, it kind of crosses over, you know? When you promote Y-12, you're promoting Oak Ridge, you know?
MR. SMITH: I am promoting Oak Ridge, very much so. The presentation that I take isn't only Y-12 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure --
MR. SMITH: -- it's the whole of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- it's the whole of Oak Ridge.
MR. SMITH: It sure is.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Well, that's great. So, what are you going to do when you retire? You're going to have to slow down, because if I take into account all the boards you're on and all the stuff that you do, you don't have time to sleep, do you?
MR. SMITH: I don't require much sleep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, okay.
MR. SMITH: But I am needing more as I get older.
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand.
MR. SMITH: But I take those Historically Speaking columns, and each year I put about 52 of them in a book and publish that book. Well, I'm four years behind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Are you? Oh, okay, so you need to --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, so I've got --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- get caught up.
MR. SMITH: -- something to do if I don't have a job, and I probably have got at maximum another couple of years before I retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: But I'm real proud of this history center. It's been very rewarding. Proud of the mural. Did you see the mural out there that covers the top all the way around?
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I don't think I noticed that.
MR. SMITH: You'll have to look at it when you go back out. It's a timeline.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Wow.
MR. SMITH: Ed Westcott images, a lot of them, and it goes around the top and tells the story of Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. All right. Well, anything else you want to talk about right now?
MR. SMITH: Oh, I could talk all day --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I know you could.
MR. SMITH: -- but I guess that's enough.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right, Ray. Thank you so much.
MR. SMITH: Oh, you bet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Appreciate it.
MR. SMITH: Thank you, Keith.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at Mr. Smith’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]

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ORAL HISTORY OF D. RAY SMITH
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 19, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March 19, 2013, and I am at the New Hope Center at Y-12 in the library of the history museum, and I'm talking with David Ray Smith, or D. Ray, as he's known around town. Ray, thanks for taking time to talk with us.
MR. SMITH: You bet, Keith. Glad to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: You're always talking about the history of Oak Ridge and promoting the history of Oak Ridge, and specifically of Y-12. We want to learn a little something about you personally, so let's start off today with why don't you tell me about you, about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
MR. SMITH: I'd be glad to. I was born in Middle Tennessee, a little crossroads community about 50 miles south of Nashville. The name of the little community is Delina, and that's D-E-L-I-N-A. I don't know of another Delina that exists. But the little crossroads community it was named for, a widow that lived there, her name was Delina Marshall, and the saying is that the town was named for her beautiful name and character. So, she was a well-respected lady in the community. Now, there were two Delina's. One was up very near her plantation, and then it was moved when the roads came through. It was moved down to where it is today. It's still there today.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, the community was moved?
MR. SMITH: Yes, the whole community was moved, and it's still there today. There's a little store there called the Crossroads Store. Several years ago, I came across a manuscript that had been written by Haskell Roden about Delina. Now, the whole manuscript didn't have a single complete sentence, it was phrases, and it was all about genealogy of people in Delina. I spent about ten years of my spare time editing that manuscript, and produced a book called “Delina,” and it has been a very popular book in the little community of Delina.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. SMITH: So, I've had a lot of fun with that.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, how many people lived --
MR. SMITH: But let me tell you --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- okay.
MR. SMITH: -- the guy that wrote the book so we get his name on here, Haskell Rodin was his name, and he was really into genealogy. So, I made a story out of all of the book that he did, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, when you were growing up there, how many people lived in Delina?
MR. SMITH: Oh, probably 25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah. The place where I went to school was Petersburg. Petersburg is about, oh, five miles, maybe ten miles from Delina, and it had a large population of 500.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So, that was a big city --
MR. SMITH: A big city, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wasn't it?
MR. SMITH: My high school class had about 26 people in it. Fanny, my wife, was in the class ahead of me, and we knew each other all the way through grade school and high school. She never would have anything to do with me until she was a senior in high school, and her cousin, Emily, talked to me and I talked to her, and I said, "You know, I'd really like to date Fanny." She said, "Well, let me talk to her." So, she did, and she set it up to where Fanny was going to be in the study hall at a given time, and I was supposed to go in and say something to her, ask her for a date. Well, what I did was I really thought I was hot stuff back then, so I strutted, okay?
MR. MCDANIEL: We all did.
MR. SMITH: Oh, we all did. I had a 1950 Ford, dark blue, fender skirts lowered in the back, spinner hubcaps. So, I walked into the study hall and I winked at her. That's been something that she's never let me forget just how big I thought I was. But she agreed to date me, and we've been together ever since. That's pushing 49 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, I have real fond memories of Delina, a little crossroads community, farming community. The first job I ever had was building the road coming through Delina. There was two of us, young boys -- between our sophomore and junior year in high school -- and I got the nickname of Slick, and the other one had another nickname, Shorty, I believe, so they aggravated the two of us. I was on the sand pile, he was on the rock pile along with another person, so they had two people on the rock pile and one on the sand pile. We were so far out in the country, you couldn't get ready-mix concrete out there. We had to mix it on site. So, every time they put two wheelbarrow-full of gravel in, I had to put two of sand. Well, I figured out that the amount of sand I had to weigh and get up there, if I rounded that wheelbarrow over, I could do it in one trip. So, I did that, and I was keeping up with them. I mean, I was just having a ball. I went over the scales, and I had to make a 90-degree turn to get into the hopper, and I come across those scales and made that 90-degree turn, and I lost that wheelbarrow. It rolled over and it just filled my foreman's feet up to his knee. He looked at me and he said, "That's all right, Slick. It don't hurt nothing but your pride. Fill it up and keep going." But that was my first job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how did you end up there in Delina? I mean did your --
MR. SMITH: My parents lived in Haislip Hollow, which is about five miles up from Delina, a little dirt road, and we lived at the headwaters of the Cane Creek, and had a 100-acre farm. It was a hillside farm. My dad and mother moved there when I was two years old. I was born over closer to Petersburg, but he moved in, Dad moved in with my grandmother, my mother's mother. She had a log cabin there, so when he moved in, he doubled the size of the log cabin, so he built a section of a house onto it, and I lived there until I graduated from high school, in Haislip Hollow in a log cabin.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did your grandmother, did she live there along with you?
MR. SMITH: Yes. Yes, she did. She was there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so it was all part of the same family unit.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, moved in with her, and she lived there until she died, and then my parents lived there until my dad died, and then Mother had to go into a nursing home. She had Parkinson's disease, and so we had to move her up to Nashville to be closer to my sister. But my dad lived there. He died with cancer in his 60's, but he was a farmer. He worked all his life as a farmer, and he wore a work shirt, he buttoned his collar at the top, and he wore a straw hat. He had 60 skin cancers burned off his face --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- all of them between his collar and the shadow of his hat, so the sun was what was doing it to him, and then one come up that didn't heal and he died. I was the youngest one of the family. I've got two brothers older than me, and a sister, and the nearest brother to me is 15 years older than I am.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: So, when you stop and think about this, I'm one of those change-of-life babies. I'm not supposed to be here. My parents had raised two boys and a girl, and then 15 years later, I came along. My dad was 49, my mother was 40, so I lost both of them when I was a teenager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. I understand.
MR. SMITH: A story that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Your brothers and sister are significantly older than you now.
MR. SMITH: -- yeah, that's right. They're in their 80's. A story that sticks with me like glue when my daddy -- I loved my daddy. I look a lot like him, and there's a good story there we'll get to in a minute. But when he was so sick with cancer, I drove him to Nashville to the hospital, and we'd go up on about a weekly basis. Now, I've got two older brothers and a sister, but they're not doing anything with this situation; his 16-, 17-year-old boy is dealing with it. So, when he went into the hospital for his last surgery, he called me into his room, and I went in, and he said, "Son, when they do this surgery on me, you tell that doctor that you want my hair." They were going to do a surgery up here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. SMITH: I said, "Dad, what do I need with your hair?" He said, "Son, the undertaker will want it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, here I am, a 17-year-old boy, dealing with those kinds of issues.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my goodness, my goodness.
MR. SMITH: He knew he wasn't coming back, it was the end of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: He knew that was the end.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, that was it.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness. So, let's move on to when you graduated high school. Tell me what did you do?
MR. SMITH: I got married.
MR. MCDANIEL: You got married? Okay.
MR. SMITH: Right after I graduated, that was the next thing we did. We graduated in May and got married in June, and the coach at the high school told my wife, Fanny -- Fanny's mother died when she was 12 years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, and her dad was sick all of his life that she knew him just about. She also was the product of an elderly -- her mother was 39, I think, and her dad somewhere in his 40's, and he died early, so she had to deal with that. When we were high school sweethearts, Fanny was a really good basketball player. She's left-handed, she had a left-handed hook shot that she could hit just at will.
MR. MCDANIEL: And she's short.
MR. SMITH: She's short --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, for a --
MR. SMITH: -- but she was good --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- ballplayer, anyway.
MR. SMITH: -- for a ballplayer. She played guard, and she was all-tournament and all-state. I mean, her coach was just really proud of her, and she's hanging with this hoodlum. So, he told her, he said, "If your mother was alive, she wouldn't let you date him."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Was that the wrong thing to tell her?
MR. SMITH: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: It didn't do any good.
MR. SMITH: Fanny would make up her own mind. You know how she checked me out? She went to her grandmother and asked her grandmother what she thought of me --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and her grandmother said, "Oh, I know his family. He's pretty good. He'll be all right." But anyway, we got married June 27 in 1964, right out of high school, and we immediately started taking care of parents, and her aunt. We lived with her aunt for a while. During this time now, middle '60s, late in the '60s, I'd had another job after that job building those bridges. This job was driving a truck for the Sun Drop, which is like a Mountain Dew. Sun Drop down in Middle Tennessee, it outsells Mountain Dew.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure.
MR. SMITH: But I had a job driving that Coke truck, or that drink truck, and I had two wrecks. One, I met a car on a narrow road and slipped off the shoulder, and the truck slid down in the ditch. I broke 250 cases of drinks out in this field. I had to go back the next day and pick up all that glass because the man's cows, he couldn't let them get to that glass. Then, I had another one in the middle of a little town called Belfast, and the insurance wouldn't let me drive anymore for this old boy. He said, "You've got to fire that guy." So, anyway, I left that job and went to another job in a little machine shop there, and Fanny was working there, too, and then we got this notice that I was going to be drafted into the Army. Well, we had parents to take care of. We had all kinds of things. We just couldn't deal with this Army.
MR. MCDANIEL: You just couldn't do that, right.
MR. SMITH: So, I went to the Air Force, and I told them, I said, "I would like to join the Air Force, but I need six months to get my things in order," and they agreed to that and gave me six months, so I avoided the draft and went in the Air Force. I went in in 1966, stayed until 1970. We first went to Texas, to Lackland Air Force Base, and I did basic training there. Then, we went to Biloxi, Mississippi, and, out of there, I went to Warner Robins, Georgia. Good peaches down there, but it's hot.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's hot. I was about to say, you chose the hot places, didn't you?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, it was. Fanny was pregnant with Mike at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MR. SMITH: We moved from Biloxi, Mississippi to Warner Robins, Georgia, and me stopping at every service station on the road so she could go to the bathroom, eight months pregnant.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah.
MR. SMITH: But Mike always tells us that he was a Georgia cracker because he was born in Georgia. But anyway, I left there and went to Vietnam, spent a year in Vietnam at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base as a radio relay technician working on air-to-ground radio and station-to-station radio, and they needed a warning system for the base. So, the base commander wanted something that he could get on and speak to everyone on the base.
MR. MCDANIEL: All at once.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, all at once, so what I set him up with, I took some of our radio equipment and created a radio station. I got some music on tape and played music 24 hours a day, except if he wanted to override it, he could just come right in on there and it would go out to the base to everybody that had radios, and everybody had a radio. They were listening to that music. They liked that music. So, we called it Giant Voice, and it was the warning system for the base. I was there right after the Tet Offensive, and that's why they wanted that warning system, because rockets were coming into the base pretty regularly. But anyway, I spent a year in Vietnam, and then came back and went to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, Midwest City, Oklahoma, and we stayed there up until September of 1970.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. SMITH: September 14, 1970, I came to work at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you stayed in the service for four years.
MR. SMITH: Four years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that what you had to do to --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, a four-year enlistment. If I had gone into the Army, it would have just been two years, but, by enlisting in the Air Force, it was four years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: But that's where I got my education as an electronic technician. I graduated first in my class for the electronic technician, and that's what got me the job here. When I came and interviewed at Y-12, two people interviewed me. One was A.K. Johnson, and when he found out that I was in the Air Force, he said, "I've got a man that needs to talk to you," and I said, "Okay." I didn't know who I was talking to. But what he did is he brought an Air Force Colonel in to interview me, and the Air Force Colonel, his name was Emerson, Colonel Emerson, but I found this out later, he was called Colonel Klink.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. SMITH: He was a strange fellow.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was he at Y-12?
MR. SMITH: He was Y-12, and he retired out of the Air Force, so he's the one that said, "That boy's got a good background. You ought to hire him, A.K." So, A.K. hired me, and I worked for A.K. for many years in maintenance. Jump ahead; just to tell you an A.K. story while we're here, he worked for Dave Jennings. Dave Jennings was known as a tough old dude, but he was soft underneath when you got to know him, but he had a very rough exterior. When I was being interviewed, A.K. interviewed me for hiring me, and then he interviewed me to promote me from hourly to salary, and Dave Jennings was interviewing me at the same time. So, one of Dave's questions to me is, "If you had unlimited funds and you could do anything you wanted to, to improve Y-12, what would it be?" and I said, "I would provide training for these supervisors you've got out here that don't know how to supervise people." Jennings reared back and hit the desk with his hands, pointed to A.K. and said, "I told you we needed some supervisory training!"
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, about two years later, I got the opportunity to recommend to the plant some supervisory training. Jennings backed me in it, and you know, when I went to him and told him what I wanted to do -- the name of the training is Interaction Management. It's based on three key principles: listen and respond with empathy, ask for help in solving the problem, and enhance a person's self-esteem, those three key principles. I went and told Dave Jennings that that's what I wanted to bring into the plant. He said, "That's tough," because he said, "You want the managers to train the supervisors." I said, "Yeah, that's the key to it. You've got to train these middle managers, because if you don't get them doing what they say they want the supervisor to do, and actually doing it, not just talking it, you'll never get the supervisors to do it." He said, "All right, we'll do it on one condition." I said, "What's that?" He said, "You train A.K. Johnson to teach it." So, I said, "Okay, you've got a deal." I took A.K. to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and spent a week with him, and I had the other people up there, too, but I concentrated on him because we had to prove that we could teach this stuff, and they measured us on competencies. So, I'd get him at night and coach him on what to do the next day; worked my tail off while I was up there. But he passed that course and, when I come back, Jennings laughed, and he said, "I never thought you could do it." But I bet I trained 150 managers to teach that course, and it stayed on out here for years, and it's still a part of the training that we produce today, still based on those key principles. Something I was proud of --
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet, I bet. Well, my goodness. So, you started doing that, started training, and you trained people here at Y-12 for a long time.
MR. SMITH: Actually, I went from electronic technician to a planner estimator, to a supervisor. At the time I was just starting in supervision, I got pulled out to go into Human Resources, and that's when we started the pride circles. Japanese quality circles were all the rage, and so we started our own version of it here, and I had that responsibility at the plant level, and then we created the foundation of Y-12 supervision, which was that program that had interaction management in it, and I had that for a number of years. Then, in about '85, I went back to maintenance out of that Human Resources training group, and spent the next 16 years in various levels of management, in maintenance for the most part, up until I became the Associate Director of the Facilities Management Organization and had the day-to-day responsibility for about 1,000 people doing the maintenance for the plant. That's where I was when we had this most interesting contract change, and that's where B&W Y-12 came in, but they were BWXT Y-12 at the time. This was in November of 2000.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: They did something no other contractor had ever done. Normally, when we'd have a contract change, they'd just bring in the president and a lawyer, and the rest of us would just keep on doing our job. We'd call ourselves We-Be's, "We'd be here before you came, we'll be here when you're gone." But now this one did something different, they brought in 100 people, and they replaced the entire top of the organization, so I lost my position.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: Now, the first thing they had to do was to do something called a Due Diligence study, and that is find all the buildings that they've just now become responsible for and write down on a sheet of paper, or in a database what the physical condition are of all of those buildings. There are 800 buildings on this site. Now, they made everybody mad at them when they fired these people, so there wasn't anybody helping them. They called a meeting together to figure out what to do to get this due diligence going. I went into the meeting and I held up my hand. I said, "I know where all 800 of them are. I'll find them for you," so they said, "Okay, you can help." I went home that night, learned Microsoft Access, come back the next day and created a database. So, we did that, we went and found all 800 buildings, wrote down the condition of them. In a few months, they got some money from Congress that was earmarked to tear down Manhattan Project structures that didn't have any mission need, nor would be needed in future missions. So, bless their heart, they didn't have a clue which buildings they could tear down and which ones they needed to keep, so they called another meeting. I went into that meeting and I held up my hand. I said, "I know. I'll make you a list," so I did, I made a list of the buildings that could be torn down. Over the last ten years, we've torn down over 300 buildings.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, that's just at Y-12.
MR. SMITH: At Y-12 only --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, at Y-12 only.
MR. SMITH: -- and they're still following my list.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, I let that go for a couple of years. I was working in infrastructure reduction, tearing those buildings down, and I went to them after a couple of years and I said, "You know, when you tear those buildings down, you're losing a lot of history." Well, by then, they had figured me out, so they said, "Okay, Ray. What is it you want to do about that?" I said, "I'll be your historian until I retire." They agreed to it. The federal people here at the site, Bill Brumley, agreed to it and supported me. They included this history center in the design for the New Hope Center. We've created documentary films, we provided this history center, we provide tours; we have made a major transition from the time when Y-12 existed, during the Cold War especially, existed by saying, "Just bring us money. Dump it out here. We'll give you as many nuclear weapons as you need. Just don't ask us about what we're doing. We'll do it for you."
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: Well, after the Cold War ended, the need for understanding by the community was substantially different. We had a lot of people that we were losing their technical expertise. They were retiring. We were trying to hire people right out of college, and they didn't understand or know what Y-12 was all about. So, this history, this Y-12 history has taken on a significant role here at Y-12. I've got other people that I call on to do these tours now. I started doing them myself, but they got to be so many there is no way I can keep up. I've got others that are capable of doing the history tours, and we're now on tour routes. We have 65-passenger buses stop here routinely and go through the history center. So, it's been a significant change that's allowed us to communicate our heritage to the employees, especially new employees, and also to the community in a way that Y-12 has never been able to do before, so it's something I'm really proud of.
MR. MCDANIEL: They couldn't really before, I mean --
MR. SMITH: No, no, they couldn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- during the Cold War, you couldn't tell what you were doing.
MR. SMITH: No. In fact, there was good reason not to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure, absolutely.
MR. SMITH: But now, there's a significant amount of what we do here that's not classified that can be talked about. There's still work that's not discussed, and that's not a part of what I deal in because I know that those things need to be kept, but there's a tremendous amount of things that we've done over the years, the Moon Box --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly.
MR. SMITH: -- things like that, that now can be talked about extensively.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure. So, you're the official historian, Y-12 historian, and you kind of got that agreement until it was time for you to retire.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, the problem they have now, of course, is I don't want to retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, of course not --
MR. SMITH: But I will.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but you could, couldn't you?
MR. SMITH: I could, yes, and I'm getting closer to the time when it's going be time to retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you've got other things to do, too.
MR. SMITH: Well, I do. I've got several other things going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about your involvement outside of Y-12. Of course, it kind of all blends together --
MR. SMITH: Well, it does.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but you've done a lot in the community of Oak Ridge. Talk about that a little bit.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, I'll be glad to. We, as I say, moved here in 1970, started living on Louisiana Avenue. We lived at 198 Louisiana, had two boys. Mike was born in Georgia, as I mentioned, he's a Georgia cracker, but Zane -- he's five years younger -- was born here in Oak Ridge, or born in Knoxville, but both of them grew up here in Oak Ridge; had a really good experience in Oak Ridge school system. Went to Willow Brook, went to Robertsville, and to Oak Ridge High School. Mike was an artist, he is an artist, still is, but even during school he got to do a lot of artwork. He drew a Superman for a backdrop for one of their plays at Robertsville, and that sort of thing. I've got four grandsons and one granddaughter, and the oldest grandson is Jake, and he's just finishing high school this year, and he's already been accepted at the Savannah School of Art and Design.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good.
MR. SMITH: -- very proud of him. He's an excellent artist, so good for that. So, Fanny and I are here and we're raising these two young boys. We are very active in our church, Highland View Church of Christ. We've been there for the 42 years that we've been here. I'm an elder there now. Back, oh, in the middle '70s, we started working with the youth program. We didn't have a hired youth director at the time, or youth minister, so we were it. We took kids all over this country, we'd take them on retreats, and also in the middle '70s, Mike was old enough to become a Cub Scout. We'd had him in Indian --
MR. MCDANIEL: Indian Guides.
MR. SMITH: -- Guides, that's it, and then, when I looked around at what opportunities were available for Cub Scouts, I didn't like any of them. They were all den mothers, and they were all working crafts, something like that, and they didn't do any outdoor activities. They only met during the school year. So, I talked to Tom Goodpasture, who was the scoutmaster for Troop 220, sponsored by our church, and he and I talked about the fact that there just wasn't good opportunities for young boys in Cub Scouts. So, we decided that the only way to get that would be to do it ourselves, so I became the Cub Master.
MR. MCDANIEL: In true Oak Ridge tradition.
MR. SMITH: True Oak Ridge tradition. I became the Cub Master and did that for 16 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, we met every Monday night year round. We met at the Children's Museum. Selma Shapiro gave me a room and let me use the gym once a month for our den meetings. At one time, we had 80 boys.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: Now, you can't do this now, insurance situations have changed, but back then, in the '80s, we could do this. We would go repelling, we would go spelunking, go in caves --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and we would take overnight hikes with these kids. We'd take the parents that would go with them. I had many children, many of the boys were in single-parent families, and all of my den leaders were men, and all of these women that were single mothers, they would gravitate to that pack because of that male influence, a good, strong male influence.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. SMITH: I had a rule that we called Kiss and Make Up; any boy that got in a fight with another boy had to kiss that boy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: We didn't have any fights.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet you didn't have any fights. How funny.
MR. SMITH: When we would get ready to go on an outing or something that I needed their attention, I'd line them up, have them all gather around me, and I'd get down on my knees to where my eyes was on the same level as them boys, and you'd be amazed how attentive they would be to what I was telling them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: I took them up on bluffs, I took them on places where it was really dangerous, and they would pay attention to me, they knew my voice, they listened and did what I said, and I can't tell you the number of times that we've had compliments from parents, and from other groups that we were participating in, on how well-disciplined our boys are. Normally, when you have a group of Cub Scouts, you've got a bunch of, well, this is what I'd call a bunch of wild Indians, and the way I talked to them is, "We will not act like a bunch of wild Indians, so if you hear me say, 'You're acting like a bunch of wild Indians,' it's time for you to change your behavior," and they would do that. I'd just have to use that word, and it would calm down whatever was going on.
MR. MCDANIEL: What an impact over 16 years --
MR. SMITH: We did, over 16 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that you had on those boys.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, I have numerous who come to me routinely and regularly and remind me of how much they enjoyed that Cub Scout Pack 220 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: -- so it's a tremendous experience.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, just think, I mean over 16 years, the number of --
MR. SMITH: The number of them, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- number of them
MR. SMITH: Well, it wasn't 80 all the time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, but still.
MR. SMITH: -- but there was 50, 60, you know --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah --
MR. SMITH: -- there was still a large number.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- a large number.
MR. SMITH: A large number.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, and it was a lot of fun, a lot of years spent there. Of course, my boys went through it and then moved on to scouting, and I was an assistant scoutmaster, as well as the cub master, because I wanted to be involved with whatever my boys were doing. They both turned out and made Eagle Scouts, and Zane, when he was being interviewed for one of his jobs, he was competing with another person, and it came down to the fact that he had an Eagle Scout --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and that got him the job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that makes a big difference.
MR. SMITH: Well, it tells --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I mean it tells --
MR. SMITH: -- it tells you that a person has the ability to stick to a project and to see it to a positive completion.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, scouting was really good. We had any of a number of adventures I could talk about. One I'll use is we went to the coal mines out here behind Oliver Springs, over toward Frozen Head. Now, we had gone to Knoxville and had permission to hike up from those coal mines. We were going to follow the coal mines and come back to Oak Ridge at Oliver Springs. So, we went up toward Frozen Head there on Highway 116. We always went in late on Friday night. We'd leave work and everybody would get together, and it would be dark before we got to where we were going to camp. Well, it was dark when we were going up that mountain, and we got up the border of the coal mining area, and this guy hollered at us and said, "What are you doing up here? You can't come on this property," and we said, "Well, we've got permission. We're Scout Troop 220, and we've got permission to hike up here." "I don't care what you've got. You're not coming on this property." Now, we didn't think about this at the time, but it was during a coalminers strike --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and he was hollering at us, and he had a dog with him, so he tried to sic that dog on us. When that dog come down the hill, the boys just started petting him. Made the old man so mad because his dog wouldn't do what he told him to. We finally figured out that he was just a little bit inebriated, he was just about drunk up there, and I'm not sure he could have read that letter if we had got him to look at it. But he told us if we didn't get down off that hill he was going to shoot us, so we decided we didn't want any of these boys shot, so we said, "Boys, you all just turn around, and let's just go on off the hill." Well, the minute we turned, he started shooting at us, and he was shooting birdshot in a .22, birdshot --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and their little pellets were hitting on the back of them packs of the boys as we were going down the hill.
MR. MCDANIEL: No! Really?
MR. SMITH: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet it scared them to death.
MR. SMITH: It did. We had a preacher with us. I never will forget what he said when he was telling those stories about getting shot on the coal mine. But one boy got a pellet in his neck that kind of burned him, but it didn't hurt. But, boy, they were just peppered.
MR. MCDANIEL: What an adventure! Talk about an adventure.
MR. SMITH: They remember that.
MR. MCDANIEL: They remember that.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, they do.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure they did.
MR. SMITH: But scouting was a big part of our time here, scouting and church, activities with young people. Fanny and I have always been engaged with young people in one way or the other, and then when I went into the eldership at the church is when I decided there isn’t nobody going to devote the kind of energy that I've been devoting to them if we don't hire somebody and pay them to do it, so I did. We convinced the church that we needed a youth minister, and we've had one ever since. We've got a good one now. But I thoroughly enjoyed what I did with the youth, Fanny and I did together, but I seriously wouldn't expect anybody else to do that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: -- but it was tremendous. We went down to a park between here and Chattanooga, and now, I'm trying to think of the name of it. I can't. But we would put the girls in one cabin and the boys in another, and then we'd tell them, "Okay, lights out, time to go to bed," and I heard this chatter from the girls. I heard them talking. So, I got up and I went out the door to go quiet them down, and I kept listening trying to figure out which cabin they were, where is it coming from, and it was coming from up high. I kept looking around and trying to find out where is this noise coming from. They're laughing, they're talking, they're having a good time, but where are they? Now, it's pitch dark. I finally saw the water tank. They had climbed up on top of that water tank.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just the girls, or were there boys with them?
MR. SMITH: There wasn't any boys, it was just these girls. So, I climbed up on that water tank real quiet, got up to the top, and they were sitting up there just having a really good time. You talk about some scared girls, I thought they were going to jump off that water tank when I let them know I was up there. But it wasn't unusual to have good times with young kids, and the thing that I remember most, and we did this with the church group, as well as the Cub Scouts, as well as the Boy Scouts, the thing that you can do with a young person that will most quickly build their self-confidence is repelling, and sometimes it's really difficult for them to do. They've got to hold on to this rope and back off of this cliff to where there's nothing but that rope is holding them. Now, there's somebody down at the bottom that's got it that can stop them, but they don't know that.
MR. MCDANIEL: That will cushion their fall at least.
MR. SMITH: Oh yeah, but they don't know that. I mean I've seen them quiver, shake, just scared to death, but when their feet hit the bottom, they have grown a mile in their self-confidence.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: It really is the number one thing that helps a kid that's having a little bit of trouble about feeling they can do things, boy, when they repel, it builds their self-confidence, and we would do that. We would look for things that would enhance that experience for those kids, and then by doing it with the Boy Scouts and with the Cub Scouts, we were real experienced at it, so we'd take these kids from church -- young girls, young boys -- and let them repel, too, and they just loved it. One of the places we used a lot is this cave that's right out here near Bull Run. I think it’s called Spring -- I forget the name of it -- Spring Hill Cave, or something. Anyway, it's got a big opening, and what you do is go up to the top and tie to a tree and repel down into the cave, so it's a free-fall. It's a long drop, so it's a good place to repel. But we had a really good time with young people for a long number of years. Can't keep up with them anymore, but I make sure that the youth minister does and I still support scouting big time, and I'm proud to see young people getting help.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what are some of the other things that you were involved in in the community? I know you've been involved in lots of things.
MR. SMITH: Well, I've been on the United Way board for two terms. I'm on my second six-year term. I'm on the ADFAC board, second term, for the Aid for Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties. I'm on the Habitat for Humanity of Anderson County board, and I'm on the board for the East Tennessee Historical Society.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and you've done a lot of community work in the preservation of --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, historic preservation.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- historic preservation.
MR. SMITH: I'm on the board for Oak Ridge Heritage Preservation Association.
MR. MCDANIEL: But not just in Oak Ridge, but really kind of around in the East Tennessee area, haven't you?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, we have. We've had the opportunity to work with the -- I'm on the board of the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance, and we cover about 16 counties there, and I'm also on the Tennessee Children's Home board, which is the whole state of Tennessee, and that's another experience there. We get to deal with kids that are just one step out of jail.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, it's a very tough, tough environment, tough situation. But we have three major locations across the state where we have those children, and we've just built two children's homes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, spent a lot of my time and energy helping young people, and I feel really good about that. But these other things that I've been involved in, these boards that I'm on, I was the chairman for the Anderson County United Way two years, and I've worked in the campaigns at Y-12 for most of the time I've been here, and I'm glad to say that over the last few years, we've been focusing on major donors, getting people to give at the $10,000.00 level and $5,000.00 level, and we've been successful at getting some people who understand the need to contribute, and who have the means to do that. So, that's a good thing that I've thoroughly enjoyed. One thing that I'm working on now that's really going to be a good thing for our area, we're going to have the 2014 Medal of Honor Convention in Knoxville and Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: Yeah. We've already won it. We put together a video and competed with Omaha, Nebraska. When they saw our video, they backed out --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- so we got it.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what is that convention? What is that?
MR. SMITH: Well, it's where the Medal of Honor recipients, there's about 80 of them, and they get together once a year. This last year, it was in Hawaii. Each year, they have a convention and they'll spend a week together --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. SMITH: -- and we'll have them here in Knoxville for that week. We're also creating a documentary film about the Medal of Honor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. SMITH: There have been films made about the people, but there's never been one made about --
MR. MCDANIEL: Just --
MR. SMITH: -- just that medal --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that medal.
MR. SMITH: -- and how it's made and what's the history of that medal. So, a few weeks ago, I had Bruce Crandall. You know the movie, We Were Soldiers?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. SMITH: Bruce, he's the helicopter pilot --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: -- that went in and kept going in and out. They brought him into town. There's a program going into the schools now that you're going to hear a lot about called Character Counts, and that's the Medal of Honor group. They have chosen that as their way to help young kids prepare to be better adults, and Tennessee is going to have it -- by the time we have that convention, we hope to have it in all 95 counties.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: We started it in Knoxville. Bruce came here and presented the first school with their certificate for being a Character Counts school, and they wanted to give him some downtime, so they asked me to give him a tour of Y-12 with no press, no publicity, so I did that. I brought him over here. He brought a little white dog with him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he?
MR. SMITH: The little dog was in a carrying case, you know?
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, goodness.
MR. SMITH: I forget the little dog's name. He sat the carrying case down, and he told me, he said, "The dog decides which carrying case he's going in each day," and he used that dog to interact with kids.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. SMITH: Yeah, that dog just loves kids. Well, it was amazing. We were standing back there in the middle of the history center, and all of a sudden that little old dog peed on my history center floor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Are you serious?
MR. SMITH: He did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, goodness.
MR. SMITH: Oh, Bruce just reached in his pocket and pulled out his toilet paper he had with him, and went over and wiped it up. I took his toilet paper away and I said, "You want some more?" and brought him back another handful to put in his pocket. But anyway, there was also an opportunity to have a lunch, just a quiet lunch, and I invited a few key people to come and have lunch with Bruce Crandall. One of the people I invited was Jim Rackstraw with Wackenhut, and the reason I did is Jim was the last person that Bruce Crandall brought out --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- in Vietnam in that helicopter. So, I had him to come over, and he came and, when he did, he brought a poster of the “We Were Soldiers,” for Bruce to sign for his son, and, when they saw one another, they just hugged, and they knew, I mean he told him, he said, "I remember you," and they had that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: That was delightful. Now, that's the kind of thing that you don't get to experience often, and, when you do, when you get to be around these people that have earned the Medal of Honor, that have been the recipient, they are tremendous people. We're going to have 80 of them here in September of 2014.
MR. MCDANIEL: That is just representative of the types of things and people that Oak Ridge attracts, isn't it? I know you've been kind of in the forefront of that kind of work.
MR. SMITH: I've been blessed to be able to get involved in many of those kinds of things that I think have been very good. One of the other things that we're working on now that I think is going to be tremendous for the city of Oak Ridge, and for the nation, is the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. We're about to get the bill passed through Congress, and, when we do, we will eventually -- now, it's years away, but we'll eventually have three locations here in Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, New Mexico and Hanford, Washington. Here in Oak Ridge, just had a conversation today with some people who are planning for and looking at how the American Museum of Science and Energy can be prepared for when this national park comes in here, to be a part of that. We got $500,000.00 from the Department of Energy to stabilize the Alexander Inn, and we've got a developer that's coming in. We got to him through the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance. So, I'm just so blessed to be able to be in a position to help influence these really good things that are happening. It sometimes means that you've got to put a lot of energy into it in order to be there when those kind of things happen. You've got to have enough involvement and integrity that people understand that when you speak about something, that's the real truth, that's really what's happening, and they can trust you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: One of the things that's helped build that in this community for me is, Historically Speaking, the newspaper column. I've been writing that on a weekly basis since 2006, that's seven years. That's a long time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, that's a long time.
MR. SMITH: -- of weekly deadlines. But I've been able to write about anything that I want to, so I can bring attention to things that need to be brought out that have historical significance.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. SMITH: So, we've been able to make the community aware of things from our history that otherwise would have slipped through the crack. Now, I intentionally look for oddities, for unusual things, things that will bring attention to our history, but you've got to think about this. I mean we're not, what, 75 miles from the Smokies. The Smokies are the two largest most visited national parks. I mean, it's just one, of course, but Cades Cove is visited more than any other national park.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: So, you've got the Smokies at 9 million, and then you've got Cades Cove at greater than any other national park. I don't remember the number for Cades Cove.
MR. MCDANIEL: I didn't know Cades Cove was a separate national park.
MR. SMITH: Well, it's not. That's what I'm saying.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: It's the same park, but just the visitors to Cades Cove alone are more visitors than any other national park, except the Smokies.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. SMITH: So, I think that's interesting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow, that's crazy.
MR. SMITH: I've been very fortunate to get to know Dale Ditmanson, the superintendent of the Smokies. The way that I got to know him was through another thing that I'm very proud to have been involved in over the years, and that's Leadership Oak Ridge. I was chairman of the board for Leadership Oak Ridge for, I don't know, nine or ten years, I don't know how long --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: -- and also got involved with the East Tennessee Regional Leadership Association, and was on their board and chaired it for three years. But through that association of 16 counties of leadership, I've gotten to know a large number of people across the region, and been able to interact with them and network with them, and one of those connections was Bob Miller, who was the public relations person for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and, through him, I was introduced to Dale Ditmanson. Now, Leadership Knoxville, actually its Introduction Knoxville, they run two programs a year. When they come into Oak Ridge for one of their programs, I meet them over on Pellissippi Parkway and get on the bus with them, and tell them my John Hendricks stories and the other stories that I tell, until we get to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then I stay with them for that night. We have dinner together and we have somebody from Y-12 talk to them, somebody from ORNL talk to them, and then we bring somebody in from, or they bring somebody in from TVA to talk to them, and somebody in from the Great Smoky Mountains, and sometimes it's Dale Ditmanson.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right, the superintendent?
MR. SMITH: So, I had dinner with him and told him about this Manhattan Project National Park, got him interested in Oak Ridge, had him come over to the East Tennessee Economic Council meeting on Friday morning. So, we've got a good relationship with him that will be very beneficial to us when the Manhattan Project National Park comes into play.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. SMITH: It was interesting. When we were working the bill last year, I was exchanging e-mail with him quite frequently, just keeping up with what's going on. So, it's those kinds of connections. East Tennessee Historical Society, we'd never had very much of a presence from Oak Ridge on that historical society. Susan Williams, who is owner of the SRW public relations firm, she decided that Oak Ridge needed to have more of a presence over there, so she picked me and asked me if I would come and serve on the board.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: I said I would. So, I went over there, got on the board, and, at that time, they were working on the Voices of the Land exhibit that's a really well done exhibit, and they needed something from Oak Ridge. So, I provided them an artifact, one of the calutron stools, some of the insulators, and then Y-12 gave them $10,000.00 to develop the video that they have there in that Oak Ridge piece. So, we were a significant contributor to that display, and I've had so many people talk about how well that display is done, and they have done a good job on it. That whole Voices of the Land is a really good exhibit. The other thing that I've been really proud to be able to do, and there are two individuals that I'm proud to be able to work with, Bill Wilcox, of course. That plaque up on the wall up there has an interesting story from Bill, our City Historian. He started out working at Y-12 as a chemist, and he got a pass when he came in here that told him he could go see XAX in Building 9731 between this day and this day, and it was a Friday and a Saturday, and he didn't go. He was too busy. You know Bill, he didn't go. So, he never got to see the calutrons. If he had gone, he would have been able to see what he was working on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: He was preparing the material to go into them, but he didn't know what he was preparing the material to go into because he didn't use his pass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Didn't use his pass.
MR. SMITH: So, a few years ago, he framed that, or gave me the pass and letter, and I framed it and put it up there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: But anyway, Bill Wilcox is a tremendous friend. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with him, and he has more knowledge about the history of Y-12, K-25, Oak Ridge than anybody else you'll know, but the other person I want to talk about is Ed Westcott. Ed is a very dear friend, and I am convinced that he should be, and is deserving of much more recognition than we've ever been able to obtain for him. I'm proud of the exhibit that's in AMSE. I'm proud of being able to hold or emcee his 90th birthday celebration, and oh, by the way, we've talked Bill into letting us do his now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's good.
MR. SMITH: We're gonna do it in April, so we'll get to do his and I'm looking forward to that. But I took Ed's pictures. When we built this New Hope Center and Jack Case Center in 2007, we needed to create a documentary film, just a short film, to use during the ribbon cutting, so we used a lot of his photographs, and I kept telling people, "You know, we've got a lot of his photographs. Let's just decorate these two buildings with nothing but his photographs, framed, in black and white," like we've got in here. So, we've got them all in the Jack Case Center and all down here, and then there's a huge 20x50 mural of the ladies leaving, the shift change photo, and when we had the ribbon cutting, I put out that picture in the newspaper -- I write a weekly column about Y-12 in the newspaper, too. That's two columns a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, yeah.
MR. SMITH: But anyway, I put that picture out there and I said, "If anybody knows anyone who's still alive in these pictures, we need to know them and we need to bring them to this ribbon cutting." So, we did. We got five people that were still alive and brought them in. Dorothy Kocher. I can't remember all five of the names right now, but one of them was Miss Atomic Bomb in 1945.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: She's the one that's the coat hanging over her arm. But we brought them out here and had them sign the picture, and brought Ed out, and we've also designated that atrium area -- there's a lot of glass on the side, and it's a real wide hallway that goes to the cafeteria.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. SMITH: I put some stick-on, I don't know what you call them. What do you call when you stick something on, it's a label or a --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: -- whatever. Anyway, it's Ed's picture that's up there, and we've called it the Ed Westcott Gallery. So, I also took 48 of his black and white images, framed them, made two sets of them; one set is over in the University of Tennessee building in Oak Ridge, where ETEC, East Tennessee Economic Council, where they meet, and the other set is coming back now from the Atlanta archives, the National Archives in Atlanta. We sent them down there last summer when we had a symposium down there where we were working with Joel Walker. We had a symposium about Oak Ridge history, and invited all of the area universities to come and see the records that are down there on the Manhattan Project, and I let him have this traveling exhibit, and he's run it for, well, about nine months now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: So, when it comes back, it's headed over to the East Tennessee History Center to go there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. SMITH: Another thing that came out of that picture being run in the newspaper,r is that Denise Kiernan saw that photograph of those women and she said, "That's a good idea for a book."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. SMITH: That is exactly right, and what she did is she filed that away and then, later on, she pulled it out and she contacted me and said, "Ray, if I come over to Oak Ridge, will you introduce me to some of those women?" and I did, and that book has turned out to be “The Girls of Atomic City” that's going to be introduced tonight.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, she's in town tonight.
MR. SMITH: Yeah, absolutely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
MR. SMITH: She'll be here tonight at the American Museum of Science and Energy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: But that sprang from that picture, and she's done a wonderful job with that book. Also, she's got connections with publishers and folks in New York City. I mean she was the – I forget what part she played in it, that program on television, to be a millionaire, something about millionaires.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. SMITH: I don't know what it is. But anyway, she knows her way around New York City, and she fell in love with Ed Westcott's work --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. SMITH: -- and I've taken her up to his house a number of times, and he just loves her because she just makes over him like crazy. But anyway, she wants to take his photographs and do an art exhibit in New York City, and I've told her, "I'll send them. You tell me where to send them. I've got them boxed up, and we can do it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, ready to go.
MR. SMITH: So, my goal is to get an art exhibit in New York City for Ed Westcott --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. SMITH: -- before he dies. I want him to be able to see it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. SMITH: So, I'm just excited about those kinds of opportunities. Because I put energy into this history issue over the years, I've come in contact with a number of really key people, and not only that, I have now just come back two weeks ago from Los Alamos, where I was invited out there to speak about Oak Ridge. I have contacts in Hanford, Washington, contacts in Washington, D.C., contacts in Pantex, all because of this historical part and this history that we have, and I also go to a number of schools every year and just talk. You remember the school. You went over to the same school in Farragut.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: When I went over there, I took my little multimedia presentation in, and I talked to them for -- my starting time was 10:00, so by the time I'd talked an hour, it was 11:00 and the bell rang for them to go to lunch. One of the young ladies in the class, young girls, held her hand up and she said, "Mr. Smith, if we go get our lunch and bring it back in here, will you keep talking?" I said, "Well, that's up to your teacher," and their teacher said, "Well, sure. We can do that." So, they went and got their lunch, brought it back in there, and I talked for another 45 minutes. So, I've got fourth and fifth graders listening to me talk for two hours.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: Now, that's astounding when you stop and think about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: It is.
MR. SMITH: It's the story.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's the story.
MR. SMITH: It's telling these stories and getting them engaged, getting them to ask you questions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure.
MR. SMITH: I had a meeting yesterday with a professor from UT. He's a professor of rhetoric, and he wants to know how I have accomplished creating this history center and creating the stories about Y-12, and creating so much interest in our history, so I'm delighted, obviously. I'm delighted to tell him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely, absolutely.
MR. SMITH: So, I'm having too much fun to retire, Keith.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I understand, and you're also still real involved in the community because, like I said, it kind of crosses over, you know? When you promote Y-12, you're promoting Oak Ridge, you know?
MR. SMITH: I am promoting Oak Ridge, very much so. The presentation that I take isn't only Y-12 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure --
MR. SMITH: -- it's the whole of Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- it's the whole of Oak Ridge.
MR. SMITH: It sure is.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Well, that's great. So, what are you going to do when you retire? You're going to have to slow down, because if I take into account all the boards you're on and all the stuff that you do, you don't have time to sleep, do you?
MR. SMITH: I don't require much sleep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, okay.
MR. SMITH: But I am needing more as I get older.
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand.
MR. SMITH: But I take those Historically Speaking columns, and each year I put about 52 of them in a book and publish that book. Well, I'm four years behind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Are you? Oh, okay, so you need to --
MR. SMITH: Yeah, so I've got --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- get caught up.
MR. SMITH: -- something to do if I don't have a job, and I probably have got at maximum another couple of years before I retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. SMITH: But I'm real proud of this history center. It's been very rewarding. Proud of the mural. Did you see the mural out there that covers the top all the way around?
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I don't think I noticed that.
MR. SMITH: You'll have to look at it when you go back out. It's a timeline.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Wow.
MR. SMITH: Ed Westcott images, a lot of them, and it goes around the top and tells the story of Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. All right. Well, anything else you want to talk about right now?
MR. SMITH: Oh, I could talk all day --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I know you could.
MR. SMITH: -- but I guess that's enough.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right, Ray. Thank you so much.
MR. SMITH: Oh, you bet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Appreciate it.
MR. SMITH: Thank you, Keith.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at Mr. Smith’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]